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Tartine Whole Wheat Loaves

Tartine Whole Wheat Loaves

I baked my fourth and fifth Tartine Basic (Whole Wheat) Country loaves this week, using freshly milled flour. I used 100% whole wheat for the leaven and 70% Whole Wheat for the dough (which came to a 73% whole wheat for the total dough).

The flour that comes out of my Komo mill, was measuring at 105 degrees toward the end of the 700 gram grind, and the wheat berries were in the fridge for about 8 hours before grinding.

The loaves came out nicely. I gave away the more distinctly patterned loaf to a family member and brought the other one with me for our weekend away, largely because I had a similar loaf in the freezer and wanted to see what this tasted like when it was fresh.

The bread was delicious and the crumb was very soft, moist and chewy.

I am starting to get more comfortable holding back some of the water because I have found that Robertson's formula and my flour (regardless of whether it is King Arthur or David Esq. brand), yields a dough that is too wet. By "too wet" I simply mean a dough that seems "pasty" at the beginning and stays wet and sticky all the way through final proofing, and never really feels like "dough" at any point in the process.

Here is the heel of the bread:

Here is the crumb, though the white balance seems off in the first shot:

And here it is a few days later on my sandwich for today's lunch:

Overall, I am very pleased with the bread and think that I will try upping the grains for my next bake. Ideally I want to see if I can get a 100% home-milled loaf that satisfies my wife and me -- not so much because I am bothered by having white flour in my bread, but because the fewer ingredients I need to make a delicious loaf of bread, the happier I am. Plus, there is a large degree of satisfaction involved in making everything from scratch, including the flour.

Comments

Very open for 73% whole home ground bread. Cutting back the water will make it less open from here on and you don't want that when it is so beautiful. The bloom says it might have been near 100% proof when it went in the DO. 85-90% would be better for the spring and bloom. Other than that, I wouldn't change a thing. It has to be very tasty. Now you are eating bread you can't buy:-) Well done and

It is hard to time the overnight retarding so that it is only 90% proofed. First, i don't have the experience to make that determination. However, I did poke this one and now know what it feels like to be "near 100% proofed" (I will accept your analysis of the bloom!). When I poked it, it was "soft" and looked in danger of not springing back, but it did slowly fill in most of the way).

But more importantly, my schedule has me mixing when I can mix and then baking when I wake up. I am not yet willing to wake up earlier than normal to determine whether I should be baking at sunrise or a little later. In this case, I woke up and finished the bake by 7:30 a.m., which is a record for me. Obviously, I could have put the dough in later, but that would have meant mixing the dough later. And that may be possible, but I didn't make a note of when I mixed the dough to see if it might be workable.

I really should keep a baking card/notebook that says when I do things so I can see how they maybe adjusted within reason.

in bread making for me - getting the bread in the oven at 85% proof - when I'm sleeping:-). I finally cut back the levain amount, put the shaped dough in the oven later and also cut back the retarded proof time so that I could get up at my normal time for baking and still have a dough that didn't over proof in the fridge! I finally got it worked out and the bloom and spring came back. So those are your options too I would think...

The poke test doesn't work for at all for me when it is shaped in the baskets and cold - when it rises an inch it is ready to bake, cold, right out of the oven. The cold dough will take longer to bake to 205 F in t he middle but the crust will also bake more boldly too - a real plus.

As I would definitely like to have it bloom more, I will keep that in mind, David.

By the way, does it matter whether I scored at 90 degrees to your analysis of the bloom? I know that it is not supposed to form ears when cut that way, but was not sure if you were eyeballing the bloom assuming I was going for ears or if you can just tell by the overall shape regardless of scoring, that it was near 100% proofed when baked.

we are looking at but the spring and bloom. With whole grains, the sooner it needs to go in the oven to get the right crumb, spring and bloom - all together. Try 80% proof next time and you will see for yourself how much better it can be for spring and bloom.

I will keep working on these loaves in the hops of getting them better and better. I am about to splurge for a second lodge combo cooker so that I can bake both loaves at once, allowing me to get the bakes done 40 minutes or so earlier. Of course that will mean loading two loaves at once and that will mean the oven will be a bit cooler than usual since I will have to open it up twice to get them both in there. But, I like the idea of getting both loaves done more or less at once.

200 grams milled whole wheat flour and 200 grams of water. Left on the counter

5:30 am Thursday Stuck Leavain in the fridge

6:20 am Thursday

Autolyzed 700 grams of whole wheat flour, 300 grams of AP flour, with 750 grams of water and mixed it up.

The dough did not seem sufficiently hydrated (lots of dry flour was not being incorporated, though I did not get in there and mix with my hands too much). So, I wet my hands and kept kneading/mixing until the mass was moist, and I put it in a clean bowl and covered it with a shower cap on the counter.

The plan

This evening (around 8pm) I sprinkle 20 grams of salt on the autolyzed dough and add 200 grams of refrigerated levain and give it a good mixing. I will bulk ferment in the fridge, doing a few turns before bed (8:30, 9 and 9:30).

On Friday morning, say 5 or 5:30, I will take it out of the fridge and, if it looks ready, I will divide, bench and have it shaped and back in the fridge by 6am for a bake at around 8pm Friday evening.

I have a feeling this schedule will not work for the dough, but ti seemed better than mixing the dough on Thursday and baking it on Saturday. We shall see, as that remains an option.

but your levain is pretty big @18.6 % of the total flour and water. I would be overproofed in 14 hours of final proof / retard with that much levain, but, since this is the 2nd long cold retard for this bread.... it may not be bad at all. With some experimentation, a variation of this should work out for your schedule.

I wound up mixing the dough at 7:30 pm, and did turns at 8, 8:30 and 9:45.

Then, out of of the fridge this morning at 5:25, benched until 5:45 and stuck it back in the fridge at 5:50.

The dough does not feel alive, and I wonder somewhat whether my leaven was ready. I did not try the float test and it lookd a little anemic, but not overly so.

In any case, working with cold dough is weird. It felt heavy, but not sticky and not super stretch this morning. I am going to assume it was not ready and therefore expect the worse to avoid disappointment tonight.

Here is what the dough looks like before it went in the fridge this morning:

and it was a failure. The dough did rise two rings in the basket but it deflated due to sticking and I do t believe it rose enough. I will post pics wheb i am able. But my bread baking has taken a step back for now.

So, to demonstrate that "winging it" only works if you know what you are looking for and how to get there...

Here is what the dough looked like coming out of the fridge:

You can see that it rose, two rows on the basket.

Sadly, in addition to being cold and damp, it was also a little sticky, so it needed to be tugged to get out of the basket...no dough left behind though. Still, deflated.

This made a very sad loaf. The scores did nothing at all, and the "crumb" was very dense with large holes throughout. A lot like swiss cheese.

I knew things were not going well from the outset. The levain did not appear puffy enough, but it still seemed to shape okay. It rose two "rows" but next time, I think I will let it rise to three rows and see how that works out.

This time around I made sure to wait until I saw the bubbles along the side of my container before shaping the dough. I wound up over-proofing for sure, because it rose quite a bit in the fridge overnight. The bulk fermentation was done haphazardly at best. It was very sticky before the last turn, but after the last turn it was much less sticky. I also used a generous amount of flour when shaping so that it would not stick to the basket.... it still stuck, and still required me to pull it out, but at least no dough was left behind.

I believe that if it was not so soft and airy, it would have come out much easier. It was delicious. Not at all close to perfection but at least the bread is great tasting and soft.

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